IEEE Madison Section - 2009 Meeting Archive
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IEEE Entrepreneurs & Consultants Network (ECN), Madison Section - Networking Meeting

Thursday, January 7, 2010, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Agenda

1. Opening Remarks (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Greetings and ground rules.
   
   
2. Networking (60 mins)
   Intended Result: We go around the room. State our name, affiliation, and share either: a project we are conducting, a project need, or a resource we can offer.
   
   
3. Special Topic (30 mins)
   Intended Result: ECN-related special topic or activity.
   The Small Business Procurement Assistance Center at MATC will do a short presentation of interest to start-ups and the group. We'll also finalize our mission statement.
   
   
4. Adjourn (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Everyone gets a chance for closing remarks before adjournment.

Wind Power Half-Day Seminar

Meeting held jointly with the City of Sun Prairie's Office of Economic Development - Wind Power Happy Hour

Thursday, January 28, 2010, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM (Happy Hour follows from 5:00 - 7:00 PM)
(NOTE: fourth Thursday of the month rather than our normal third Thursday)

Speakers:	Jeff Anthony, Director of Marketing, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Michael Vickerman, Executive Director, RENEW Wisconsin Mitch Bradt, P.E., Program Director, UW Madison Dr. Adel Nasiri, Professor UW Milwaukee There may be a speaker from the new Vestas-UW-Madison R&D partnership
Location:	Crowne Plaza Hotel 4402 E. Washington Ave. Madison, WI 53704 (877) 454-5025 (location changed!)
Registration Cost:	Free if pre-registered by Jan. 25th, $20 thereafter
RSVP:	Neil Stechschulte via e-mail or by phone at 608.825.0894. Please also CC your RSVP to David Marca or by phone at 607.645.1358.

Non-member guests are always welcome!

Mr. Anthony will provide a presentation on the market demand for wind energy in the United States, as well as an overview of supply chain trends.

Mr. Vickerman will provide an overview of wind energy and wind farm development here in Wisconsin.

Mr. Bradt will provide an introduction to Wind Turbine Equipment and make a comparison of the technologies.

Prof. Nasiri will provide a presentation on the research and educational activities at UW-Milwaukee

See attached flyer for full details.

IEEE Entrepreneurs & Consultants Network (ECN), Madison Section - Networking Meeting

Thursday, February 4, 2010, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Agenda

1. Opening Remarks (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Greetings and ground rules.
   - The meeting will begin with a welcome and a very short review of ground rules for the networking portion of the meeting.
   
   
2. Networking (60 mins)
   Intended Result: We go around the room. State our name, affiliation, and share either: a project we are conducting, a project need, or a resource we can offer.
   - Each person gets to introduce themselves to the group. Time is given to each person to, if they wish, present a project and related need for talent, present their skill set, or make an offer to support a particular kind of project.
   
   
3. Special Topic (30 mins)
   Intended Result: ECN-related special topic or activity.
   - The networking portion of the meeting will be followed by a tour of the MATC Truax Campus Labs for Engineering and Manufacturing related disciplines.
   
   
4. Adjourn (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Everyone gets a chance for closing remarks before adjournment.
   - We will adjourn after the tour.
   

Growing Your Business through Government Sales

Thursday, February 18, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

Ms. Denise Reimer is the Program Manager of the Business Procurement Assistance Center for the Greater Madison Area. For several years, Denise has led the center's key service: to support local business in their quest to participate in government contracting.

The Business Procurement Assistance Center (BPAC), funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense, was established in 1988 to provide technical and marketing assistance to Wisconsin businesses interested in government contracting. This presentation will discuss government contracting, its process, registering your business for consideration, and becoming a responsible contractor. This is a "must attend" for those firms wishing to enter the realm of government contracting!

IEEE Entrepreneurs & Consultants Network (ECN), Madison Section - Networking Meeting

Thursday, March 4, 2010, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Agenda

1. Opening Remarks (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Greetings and ground rules.
   - The meeting will begin with a welcome and a very short review of ground rules for the networking portion of the meeting.
   
   
2. Networking (60 mins)
   Intended Result: We go around the room. State our name, affiliation, and share either: a project we are conducting, a project need, or a resource we can offer.
   - Each person gets to introduce themselves to the group. Time is given to each person to, if they wish, present a project and related need for talent, present their skill set, or make an offer to support a particular kind of project.
   
   
3. Special Topic (30 mins)
   Intended Result: ECN-related special topic or activity.
   - None planned for this meeting. There will be one for the next meeting.
   
   
4. Adjourn (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Everyone gets a chance for closing remarks before adjournment.
   
   

Why Doesn't My Electricity Come from the Sun? Future Materials for Harnessing Solar Energy

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

The Earth is continuously bathing in over 10^17 watts of sunlight. This talk will discuss the science, technology, and economics of using photovoltaic solar cells to collect and convert a fraction of this free solar energy into electricity. In particular, this talk will focus on the materials and composition of photovoltaic solar cells and the principles of their operation and will attempt to answer the question of why past and current solar cell technologies have failed to become widespread. The talk will conclude by discussing the future of solar photovoltaics and new materials and technologies (with a focus on those being pursued by my research group such as semiconducting carbon nanotubes) that have the potential to boost the efficiency, decrease cost, and increase the practicality of solar cells.

Michael S. Arnold joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor in August 2008. He directs the Advanced Materials for Energy and Electronics Group at UW-Madison and is a leader in the research of novel materials for next generation solar photovoltaic, optoelectronic, and semiconductor logic devices. Prof. Arnold graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 2001. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2006 from Northwestern University in Materials Science and Engineering. Prof. Arnold also conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he studied carbon-based electronic materials for high-efficiency white lighting and photovoltaics.

IEEE Entrepreneurs & Consultants Network (ECN), Madison Section - Networking Meeting

Thursday, April 1, 2010, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Agenda

1. Opening Remarks (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Greetings and ground rules.
   - The meeting will begin with a welcome and a very short review of ground rules for the networking portion of the meeting.
   
   
2. Networking (60 mins)
   Intended Result: We go around the room. State our name, affiliation, and share either: a project we are conducting, a project need, or a resource we can offer.
   - Each person gets to introduce themselves to the group. Time is given to each person to, if they wish, present a project and related need for talent, present their skill set, or make an offer to support a particular kind of project.
   
   
3. Special Topic (30 mins)
   Intended Result: ECN-related special topic or activity.
   - Tim Chapman or David Marca will speak about general support for consulting.
   
   
4. Adjourn (5 mins)
   Intended Result: Everyone gets a chance for closing remarks before adjournment.
   
   

Building Accessibility directly into the Global Internet: Making the Internet easier to use for people of all ages and abilities

Thursday, April 15, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

Broadband technologies are rapidly becoming integral to education, commerce, employment, community participation, health and safety Yet there remain multiple barriers to effective and affordable access by people with disabilities, elder, or those with low literacy creating an increasing digital divide. There are assistive technologies that can provide access for some. However it is not available for all disabilities, not affordable by many, and lags mainstream developments and deployments. Even when the latest AT is close to the latest IT, few people have the latest version. The cost of keeping up with mainstream technologies reduces resources available for innovation in assistive technologies and new directions in broadband technologies will require an already strapped AT industry to retool and re-architect their products. We are moving to an ICT environment with a profusion of hardware models (desktop, laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablet, set top box, game systems, players), multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo (Nokia), Bada (Samsung), WebOS, etc.), hundreds of software applications that embed another universe of widgets, plug-ins, and players, and a networked information environment that adheres to no standard and mutates far beyond the initial conception of the Web. Our current access technologies and infrastructure cannot handle this; the assistive technologies that now exist do not address all disabilities well, particularly cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, deaf-blindness and the mixed problems faced by elders; current assistive technologies often add, rather than reduce, complexity; finally, but importantly, people are not aware of what is possible, see it as complicated, and do not have any easy way to determine that there is something that can help them.

A coalition of academic, industry and non-governmental organizations and individuals are coming together to promote the creation of a National Public Inclusive Infrastructure (NPII) to address these problems. The purpose is to ensure that everyone who faces accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy or aging, regardless of economic status, can access and use the Internet and all its information, communities, and services for education, employment, daily living, civic participation, health and safety.

An NPII would provide key software enhancements to the physical infrastructure to allow lower cost accessibility that could be invoked on any computer, anywhere. Its key components would be a cloud based delivery system that would allow anywhere, any computer access, a personal preference system to allow systems to automatically configure themselves to users, a system of wizards to make creation of a preference profile simple even when a professional is not available, a metadata server to allow users to find accessible media or captions or descriptions for inaccessible media, a trusted source for malware free solutions, a rich development environment with common building blocks, and an awareness program to make more people aware of what is possible for them. All of the NPII components are being designed to support both commercial assistive technologies and free, built-in access features (universal design). The NPII will include a delivery system, personalization profiles and a rich development system and common modules. In addition to lowering development costs and increasing the number of solutions for different disabilities, the NPII can also enable new types of assistive technologies and services, including assistance-on-demand services that allow consumers to invoke computer or human assistance whenever and wherever they need it. The goal is a richer set of access options that it is less expensive to create and distribute and that can address the needs of a wider range of disabilities than is possible today. And a model infrastructure that can be replicated internationally and bring this wide variety of access options and the lower cost delivery system for both commercial and free access features to countries world-wide.

Gregg Vanderheiden is a professor of Industrial and Biomedical Engineering, and director of Trace R&D Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked in technology and disability for more than 38 years and currently directs the NIDRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Information Technology Access, and co-directs the RERC on Telecommunications Access (joint with Gallaudet University).

Dr Vanderheiden was a pioneer in the field of Augmentative Communication (a term taken from his writings in 1979), and worked with people having physical, visual, hearing and cognitive disabilities. His work with the computer industry led to many of the access features that are standard today. For example, access features developed by Dr. Vanderheiden and his team (e.g., StickyKeys, MouseKeys, etc.) have been built into the Macintosh OS since 1987, OS/2 and the UNIX X Window system since 1993, and more than half a dozen were built into Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and now System 7. His work is also found in the built-in access features in ATMs, Point of Sale terminals, and cross-disability accessible USPS Automated Postal Stations, as well as the accessible Amtrak ticket machines, and in airport terminals.

Dr. Vanderheiden has served on numerous professional, industry and government advisory and planning committees including those for the FCC, NSF, NIH, VA, DED, GSA, NCD, Access Board and White House. Dr. Vanderheiden served on the FCC's Technological Advisory Council, was a member of the Telecommunications Access Advisory committee and the Electronic Information Technology Access Advisory Committee (508 and 255 refresh) for the US Access Board, and served on the steering committee for the National Research Council's Planning Group on "Every Citizen Interfaces," and the National Academies' Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Disability in America.

He has received over 30 awards for his work on technology and disability include the ACM Social Impact Award for the Human-Computer Interaction Community, the Ron Mace Award, the Access award from AFB, the Yuri Rubinski Memorial World Wide Web Award (WWW6), and the Isabelle and Leonard H. Goldenson Award for Outstanding Research in Medicine and Technology (UCPA).